Roberts: The holy warriors have it wrong

Friday

Feb 25, 2011 at 12:01 AMFeb 25, 2011 at 6:36 PM

We've covered Congress for decades, and we've always considered Richard Lugar one of the most honorable and effective members of the Senate. But this year, the Indiana Republican is facing a stiff primary challenge from state treasurer Richard Mourdock, who claims that Lugar has strayed "too far to the left." Tea Party activist Monica Boyer adds, "We feel like we can do better."

Cokie and Steven Roberts/ Syndicated columnists

We've covered Congress for decades, and we've always considered Richard Lugar one of the most honorable and effective members of the Senate. But this year, the Indiana Republican is facing a stiff primary challenge from state treasurer Richard Mourdock, who claims that Lugar has strayed "too far to the left." Tea Party activist Monica Boyer adds, "We feel like we can do better."

Lugar is not alone. Republicans Orrin Hatch of Utah and Olympia Snowe of Maine are both facing attacks from holy warriors on the right for committing the same sin as Lugar - the heresy of reason. They believe that Democrats can actually have good ideas and that compromise is a virtue, not a vice. Infidels! Burn them at the stake!

Tea Party crusaders might be the loudest proponents of jihadist politics, but they have plenty of allies. Sen. Jim DeMint of South Carolina has tried to incinerate a number of his fellow Republicans for "betraying" conservative values, and party stalwarts like Rush Limbaugh have said the GOP is better off with a purer (if smaller) delegation in Congress.

From one viewpoint, this witch-hunting thrills Democrats, because the purists could condemn the Republicans to permanent minority status. And there's plenty of evidence that the Tea Party & Co. actually cost the GOP control of the Senate. Yes, Tea Party-backed insurgents captured seats in Florida, Kentucky and Pennsylvania. But conservative activists also helped nominate candidates who lost in Nevada, Delaware and Colorado - states that more moderate Republicans might well have captured.

Sen. Lisa Murkowski is an expert on the subject, since she was defeated in the Republican primary by a Tea Party favorite but then won a write-in campaign. Speaking of DeMint, who led the drive to purge her, Murkowski told Politico: "I think some of the Republicans in the Congress feel pretty strongly that he and his actions potentially cost us the majority by encouraging candidates that ended up not being electable."

From another perspective, however, this trend is potentially devastating, not just to the Democrats' legislative agenda but to the national interest. What makes Washington different from, say, Baghdad is the spirit of mutual trust and respect that undergirds our political institutions. The jihadist creed - one side is always right, the other always wrong - undermines that trust and makes legislative accommodation almost impossible.

The holy warriors are already making an impact. In a sop to his critics, Hatch (who once cherished his close friendship with Ted Kennedy) reversed his long-standing support for the DREAM Act, an imaginative proposal that would allow foreign-born youngsters who were brought here as infants to work their way toward citizenship. John McCain, after surviving a near-death experience in the Republican primary last year, has abandoned his support for immigration reform.

To understand the threat posed by the jihadists, look at what they are throwing in Lugar's face. As the Senate's primary expert on arms control, Lugar strongly supported the New START treaty, an important agreement with Russia that many military leaders and former Republican officials endorsed.

It was a classic case of a professional legislator working with a president from the other party to serve the national interest. Seven other Republicans followed Lugar's lead and helped ratify the pact in December, but in announcing his campaign this week, Lugar's challenger denounced New START and branded his opponent "Barack Obama's favorite Republican."

Lugar's heresies include voting for TARP, an essential effort to rescue a failing economy that drew strong Republican backing and was signed by that lily-livered moderate George W. Bush. He also had the temerity to support both of Obama's nominees to the Supreme Court, Elena Kagan and Sonia Sotomayor. Lugar was following a long tradition of bipartisanship in judicial nominees (the Senate unanimously approved conservative icon Antonin Scalia in 1986). But to the purists, this was one more example of Lugar's fatal flexibility.

During his six terms in the Senate, Lugar's greatest contribution was his co-sponsorship of the Nunn-Lugar legislation in 1992 that finances the dismantling of nuclear weapons in the former Soviet Union. It is one the best examples in recent years of two lawmakers from opposite parties (Sam Nunn was a conservative Democrat from Georgia) jettisoning political advantage and working together to enhance the country's safety. And yet that is exactly the sort of bipartisan cooperation that has drawn the wrath of Lugar's detractors.

His critics say Indiana can "do better" than its senior senator, but they have it exactly wrong. Congress doesn't need fewer Dick Lugars. It needs more of them.

Steve and Cokie Roberts can be contacted by e-mail at stevecokie@gmail.com.

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